Recruiting Budgets: By Company Size, Region

The overall average recruiting budget for a URR operation in 2016 was $562,642, an increase of nearly 6 percent over last year, according to results of NACE’s 2016 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey.

Last year, the average total annual recruiting budget for a URR operation was $532,220. One constant between the years is that recruiting budgets ranged widely between company sizes. (See Figure 1.) This year, recruiting budgets dipped below the overall average for organizations with between 1,001 and 2,500 employees and for those with between 5,001 and 10,000 employees.

There are also discrepancies between regions. Employers located in the Southeast ($680,084) and Midwest ($571,607) averaged greater budgets than those in the West ($420,666) and Northeast ($350,707).

One explanation for this difference between regions could be the type of URR operation common in each. URR operations that are standalone—which were more common in the Southeast and Midwest than in the West and Northeast—have a higher probability of including staff salaries and benefits when reporting their total budgets compared to URR operations that are embedded in an HR department.

With this in mind, it’s no surprise that standalone URR operations reported a higher average budget of $903,929 (see Figure 2), compared to URR operations that were components of an HR department, which averaged $391,236 (see Figure 3).

NACE’s 2016 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey was conducted from May 24, 2016, to August 31, 2016, among NACE employer members; 233, or 24.6 percent, responded. The survey report will be available in early 2017.